STANFORD MARSHMALLOW AND PRISON EXPERIMENTS

I misidentified one of my photos yesterday, indicating that I thought they were chicken feet:

A friend sent me to another site which showed this photo as that of weird lemons:

Makes sense because in Chinatown here they would never place chicken feet next to tomatoes. Sorry, but I did say "I think these are chicken feet."

This friend also sent me this video of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and asked if I was familiar with this study. My answer is no, but here are the details:

In 1971 Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo received a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to conduct a role-play simulation of a prison on campus to determine the psychological effects of prisoners and guards.

You can read the details in Wikipedia.
Planned for a period of two weeks, Zimbardo terminated the effort after six days because of some outrage and parents' concerns.
In short, for decades to follow, this controversial Stanford Prison Experiment was criticized as being deeply flawed and a lie, among other comments, decrying the methodology and ethics.
Yet, the experiment did illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.
In 2002 there was a BBC Prison Study to examine Zimbardo's themes of tyranny and resistance, and became a documentary series called The Experiment.

The findings were very different.
There was no evidence of guards conforming to the natural role, and increased resistance of prisoners.
A whole slew of subsequent papers also challenged the contention of Zimbardo.

Zimbardo, who earned his PhD from Yale, and had already taught at New York University and Columbia before joining the Stanford Faculty in 1968, went on to fashion a successful academic career, including writing The Lucifer Effect and gaining kudos for his work on shyness, anti-bullying and various charitable activities.
He retired in 2003 and remains somewhat active at the age of 88.

Just around the same time, another Stanford psychologist, Walter Mischel, ran the Stanford Marshmallow Test, suggesting that self-discipline at an early age (4-5) can lead to later success. I later found a review entitled 40 Years of Stanford Research Found That People With This One quality Are More Likely to Succeed. I've found that this Power of Delayed Gratification worked for me. To quote:

The children who were willing to delay gratification and waited to receive the second marshmallow ended up having higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.

Does this mean that a child who can't delay gratification will ultimately fail in life? Well, maybe not. A 2020 study challenged the original contention. Yet, that paper came from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, and is linked to a philosophy that is steeped in conservative religion. Science has been critical of much that the Templeton Prize offers. But what has religion to do with psychology and success or not? Philosophers have long wrestled with that question.

Oh well, that is too much thinking for today. So let me end with life at 15 Craigside, which integrates Ikebana with Chinese New Year, sunsets and flowers, starting with my first water lily of the season, followed by some wonderful arrangements of Irene's students:

Notice in the background a painting titled Good Fortune.

Which leads to our celebration of the Chinese New Year. There are at least ten ways to spell this, but most in Hawaii say Gung Hei Fat Choy. However, this literally means May You Be Prosperous and Happy. The correct way to say Happy Chinese New Year is, in Mandarin, Xin Nian Kuai Le, and in Cantonese, Sun Nin Fai Lok.

On February 1 we had our annual Chinese New Year Lunch.

We had jai, char siu pork and fried rice, hoisin ribs, lup chong steamed fish and rice cake, plus Johnnie Walker Black label and beer.

Then, also celebrating the Chinese New Year, went to Happy Days to pick up a Peking Duck package for a sunset meal on my lanai.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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IS FLORIDA AGAIN THREATENED BY A MEGA TSUNAMI FROM LA PALMA?

From the morning New York Times : Here is a graph comparing average daily COVID-19 deaths/100,000 people, and the USA is doing something really wrong: The difference between our country and Europe is that we have flubbed the availability of cheap and ubiquitous at-home RAPID testing. They have covered this base. There are two obvious problems: The FDA is much too bureaucratic about quickly approving anything related to this pandemic, including testing. We seem stuck with the test that takes one to several days to get your result. The good news is that the Biden administration has finally realized this problem and through executive order hope to soon flood the market with take home testing that at first will be subsidized to make it affordable. Now, on to getting everyone vaccinated, especially 5-11 years olds ( and we are close to getting to making this happen ), the undereducated and Republicans. What to do about the latter two? The other concern is whether we a...

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